I've had a fascination with trees since I was small. When very young, we lived in Cottonwood Arizona where there are some trees but mainly along the river banks. The family had a huge - well it seemed huge to me then - mulberry tree in the front yard. My father surrounded the base of the mulberry with a sand pile and all (7) of us kids used to play for hours making roads, neighborhoods and houses with rooms filled with cardboard box furniture. The sand on the ground floor could be changed according to the game played that day, and the upstairs was in the branches of the mulberry tree. I loved to be sent to my room by ‘mother’ or ‘father’ and I would climb high into the branches and sit, or lie out along the branch and look up into the sky. When really being bad, I would climb up onto the tips of the branches and jump onto the roof of the house – My mother would come out in her apron and with the broom and yell for me to ‘get down!’ I had my secret ways down so she couldn’t catch me with her broom when I hit the ground…. But this tree was the start of my love affair with all trees …..
Today Camillo and I live in the Serra do Mar (mountain range of the sea), in a reserve of the Atlantic forest (Mata Atlantica) that encompasses the city of Nova Friburgo and its surrounding metropolitan area. I have written and shown photos of the trees in our part of the forest both for spring and for the fall & winter colors many times, so for this week's shoot-out I have tried to find a few new ones for you to enjoy. 
Our garden – the area that surrounds the house - is mostly pine trees which are not native to this area. They line the properties and fill the gardens but I have never seen them in the actual forest. There you see banana trees, beautiful puffy clusters of bamboo, deep purple quaresmeira, silver topped Embaúva- preta. There are also - bright yellow or pink ipē-da-serra, and the common Embaúva soaring tall, straight, elegantly above the forest.
And the hundreds of other unidentifiable but beautiful trees none the less. They grow in the same space or out in the wide open, adding color and texture for me to see everyday.
